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Graizon Thala'mar
A former Knight-master of Silvermoon City, this soldier is now deceased. History Prior to Knighthood Graizon Thala'mar was born in Silvermoon City, among the zero-income poverty stricken people that the city seems to often forget. Like most people living under those conditions, he never really knew his parents or family. It seems that in such a bleak environment, no one really has the means to support their young. Graizon survived childhood like many others in such a situation do: by clinging to any nearby adult who would receive him. After a period of drifting around Silvermoon's infamous Murder Row in this fashion, Graizon reached an age where he could fend for himself. He learned to steal and handle himself in a fight so that he could acquire the food or money that he needed to survive. It was at this point in Graizon's life that he met an apparently homeless child by the name of Avist Sunwalker. Avist seemed to be from the same world as Graizon and the two of them quickly became friends. Helping each other to survive on the streets, they worked together to steal their daily essentials. The two would often leave the imprisoning walls of Silvermoon City to sit in the gardens and talk about all the exotic locales they some day hoped to visit. As they moved on through their childhood and adolescence, they began to take on more dangerous robberies. While attempting to escape from a botched attempt to steal silverware from a noble's estate, Graizon suffered an arrow to the chest. With the noble and his personal guards approaching quickly, Avist became frightened and fled, abandoning Graizon. Graizon did not die that day, but the events of it haunted his thoughts for decades to come. He would not see Avist Sunwalker again until they were both well into adulthood. Lacking money, nourishment, and a general purpose for living, Graizon's mental state rapidly suffered and he developed a habit of drinking and starting fights that he couldn't win. He quickly developed a need to be beat up, and the unconscious contentment he felt from sustaining physical damage would stay with him for the rest of his life. Graizon spent years indulging this empty contentment. His days were spent obsessively exercising outside the city walls, while nights were spent drinking and provoking others. He would often let his opponent win. Service in the Blood Knight Order Graizon's past had made him resentful of Silvermoon, as well as the noble class that resided within it. He often blamed the nobles for his lot in life, his mind using them as the scapegoat for his tough childhood. This attitude caused his next path in life to be an unexpected one. One evening, he was sitting outside a tavern while nursing an ale when he observed an exchange between two on-duty Blood Knights. Something about their exchange struck Graizon to his very core, and he felt an intense need for the strict military structure that he had just witnessed. He spent the next couple of weeks talking to people around Silvermoon and learned that the Seventh regiment was the unit of knights that he had witnessed. His lucky break came when he assisted in chasing down a night elf in Eversong, which led him to an encounter with the Knight-Lord Renaird Erona. In this way he was able to be recruited as an official Blood Knight, having never really received an education or attended the appropriate academies. While he had not intended to break through the system and skip the usual channels, it worked out well for him. Having never experienced a formal education, Graizon was unable to read or write. Because of the nature of his recruitment, he was able to continue hiding this fact for years to come. By the time the truth finally came out, he would be a Knight-master and it would matter little. Graizon was one of the original Knights chosen by Knight-Lord Bloodvalor to initially form the Ninth regiment of Silvermoon City. The regiment was very much an experimental unit, to be run with minimal influence from Knight-Lord Bloodvalor himself. Graizon, as with all the other founding members, had climbed to the rank of Knight by this time. Eventually, he would be promoted to Knight-master, the only one of the Ninth regiment. Because there was little assistance from Bloodvalor, Graizon had suddenly become the head of the regiment, for all intents and purposes. This had an ill effect on him, as the Ninth was largely a failed experiment in his opinion and it was a role he had never desired. Of the eleven original Knights on active duty in the regiment, the Ninth was eventually reduced to only four. The other seven had all either disappeared or been killed in action. This was hard on Graizon, as he felt he had inherited a sinking ship. With the weight of the crumbling Ninth regiment upon his shoulders, Graizon succumbed to stress. He had not been prepared, or even trained, on the burden of command. This was an especially strange position for Graizon as he felt that he had no love for Silvermoon, despite the fact that defending it as a Blood Knight was really the only life he had. With the weight of command, he had lost that regimented and controlled lifestyle that lured him to the knights to begin with. Unsurprisingly, the Ninth regiment eventually crumbled completely and Graizon was enthusiastically welcomed back into the fold of the Seventh regiment. There he served as a veteran Knight-master until his untimely demise. Death During his last several months, Graizon had been observed coughing blood on a regular basis, though he made every effort to hide it from his regiment. One morning in July, while on one of his notoriously grueling daily runs through Eversong, he experienced extreme chest pain and collapsed as his heart failed to work properly. A later autopsy would reveal that Graizon's death was caused by small shards of an outdated stone arrowhead swimming in his bloodstream. Though nobody was around to make the connection, the arrowhead fragments were left over from his wound suffered while running from the enraged noble as a young thief. The tiny fragments had been slowly damaging his heart through the spread of time and when the organ could finally take no more, his days were numbered. With no next-of-kin on file to notify, Graizon's death passed by and only a select number of individuals were left to remember him. Curiously, the coroner's report of his autopsy disappeared from Silvermoon records about a month after he died. The persons responsible were never caught. Beliefs and Personality Graizon was known for his up-front and brute force fighting style. Lacking the skills of a duelist that a knight with proper upbringing might have, he applied his brawler mentality to combat and was known for just how effective it could be. The sight of him in combat was brutal, violent, and as far from graceful as is possible. However, it proved to be very effective for him. He was noted for making use of all his limbs in a fight, never hesitating to knock his opponent's teeth out with a backhanded sweep of a plate mail-covered fist if his sword would be too slow to get the job done. Though he served as a Blood Knight, Graizon eschewed the usual reliance on the Light as a tool of war. He was a practical soldier, putting his faith into heavy armor and quality swords instead. In the same fashion, he was known for his dislike of the Light as a healing tool. He was an outspoken supporter of the practical medicines such as bandages, splints, and herbs. He could often be observed instructing Initiates that if they couldn't bear pain without the help of the Light, they would not make good soldiers. Graizon was notorious for being blunt and never took issue with speaking his mind. He saw the world in specific ways, most of them instilled in him by other people, and his will was iron in the face of those who disagreed. He was often noted as gruff, with a dry and harsh voice set to a constant glare upon his face. Despite this, Graizon seemed to maintain many friends among his comrades, as well as a tremendous amount of respect from various knights for his stoicism and dedication to duty. Category:Characters Category:Blood Elf Category:Blood Knights